Commentary on Political Economy

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Individualism and Freedom - Origins Part 6

The “reduction” of living labour to abstract labour, to bare “labour
power”, can become “real” only by means of political violence, only through the
com-pulsion – literally, through the co-ercion (Greek, ergon, work) – of living
labour on the part of the capitalist. But in capitalism this com-pulsion and
co-ercion can occur in a seemingly “spontaneous” manner by simply “separating”
or alienating living labour from the “means” of its re-production – from the
means of production; in short, through the “expropriation” of living labour. Once
living labour is separated forcefully from the means of production and social
labour, it is then a fairly straightforward process to regard each worker –
destitute and alienated from the means of production and the co-operation of
social labour – as an “individual” who can be remunerated for his or her “individual
labour”. The entire notion of “the division of labour” is all here.

And the money wage is another institution that ensures that the “individual
labour” of each worker remains “separate” and unrelated by any social bond
either to the means of production or to social labour other than by the “fact”,
the “reality” that it is in “reality” part and parcel of social labour, were it
not for the compulsion and coercion of the capitalist who enforces the money
wage “payment” for use of the “labour power”.

The worker therefore, as destitute living labour, is “free” in two
senses: “free” form the bonds (social, legal, institutional and cultural) that
may “link” him to the means of production and also from the “bonds” to other
workers whose co-operation is essential in what is ineluctably “social labour”.
And the worker is also “free” to spend the money wage in whichever way he
chooses – so long as the product is produced by another capitalist! The only
place where the worker is not “free”, of course, is in the workplace – in the
factory or the office. We have therefore a “dictatorship of the workplace, and
a democratic marketplace”. We have the compulsion of production and the “freedom”
of consumption – with the ironic proviso that the worker’s “choice” of
consumption is itself determined by the capitalist who compels his living
labour as “individual labour” (!) and decides what gets produced, when and how.
The ownership of the means of production also allows the capitalist to
determine – subject to the need for the worker to reproduce himself – “what”
the worker receives in wages.

The origins of bourgeois “individualism” and “freedom” are absolutely
evident in this presentation. But this “individualism” and this “freedom” are
in fact and quite evidently founded upon the compulsion and coercion to which
living labour is subjected so as to be forced “to sell” itself as “labour power”,
as “individual labours”. It is this “compulsion and coercion” that can then
allow the capitalist and his loyal servant, the economist, to present the
operation of “the market economy” as a “scientific process” subject to “economic
laws”! To be sure, living labour is “free” to wallow in absolute poverty and “free”
to buy goods and services produced with the living labour of coerced workers:
but this does not deter our capitalists and economists from maintaining at one
and the same time the “scientific” necessity of economic laws of the market and
the “free labour and consumer choice” of that same market (the labour market
and the market for goods)!

By reflex, given that the aim of capital is to disguise the compulsion,
the sheer violence of the capitalist process of production, it is essential for
the bourgeoisie to represent that the market “mechanism” can operate properly – be
in “equilibrium” – only if its participants – employers and employees,
producers and consumers – behave in accordance with its “economic laws”. It
is when living labour refuses to play by those “rules and laws” that the
capitalist reserves the right not to make the means of production available for
the reproduction of living labour. This is the “freedom” of the capitalist. But
note that “the capitalist” here – unlike living labour – does not have to be
made up of “individual capitalists”. Indeed, capital is entirely free to
associate into corporations and conglomerates – and is forced to do so by the
antagonism of workers – so that workers can be beaten into submission and
social labour be maintained under the false guise of “individual labours”.

We will see next how this social antagonism of the wage relation leads
both to capitalist concentration as well as to inter-capitalist rivalry. For
the moment, we can reflect on this wonderful bourgeois antinomy between
individualism and compulsion, freedom and coercion.